linux registry (no, not that again!)

[Nicolas Mailhot]

On mer, 2004-08-04 at 04:42 -0400, Daniel Veillard wrote:

>   It is not binary. It is editable in case of problem, but you have
> to understand the data being stored and why it's that way. Sorry
> to me this is still fullfilling the initial goal. This is escaping
> not binarization, the rule is simple.
>   Would you suggest that only French text be stored as gconf strings
> because that's the only ones users would be able to understand and fix ?
> No this doesn't make sense. Same argument in this case, if you're minimally
> fluent in XML then why it's escaped and how to fix it if needed is 
> possible.

The correct analogy would be to use french key name/values in config
files and yes I *would* expect users to be incensed because I choose to
use nonsensical (for them) values in a config files.
(well french is not a perfect example since it's a western european
language - russian would be a better one).

Conf files are not supposed to be computer-friendly only. Conf files are
exposed to the user/admin and need the same love as the UI for example.

(and BTW this is not an attack on XML - I breathe XML these days. But
there are lots of ways to use XML in conf files that do not make human
intervention as difficult as here. Rule one being avoiding entities like
the plague they are. Being good computer XML is not sufficient here.)

I do not consider all the efforts exim, postfix... spent on replacing
sendmail configuration hell by something more human-friendly wasted. I'm
sure lots of people can read sendmail files in the text.

Regards,

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: Ceci est une partie de message num?riquement sign?e
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/attachments/20040804/edaaf092/attachment.sig>